Battlefield 1 Revealed in Launch Trailer

[Squilookle]

Nice to see some of the more dynamic parts of the war getting coverage. Arabia, the Eastern Front, maybe Turkey. Not everything was trench warfare and stalemates, and those trench battles were often a lot more dynamic than is commonly depicted in media.

Unfortunately, we have ingrained in our collective mind that every battle of WW1 was a bunch of people charging over a trench, getting immediately killed, and then the other side repeating it until tanks were invented. There was a lot more to the war, in urban warfare and cavalry charges and beach assaults and fairly fluid modern warfare in some areas. Those Trench battles weren't always immediately slaughter either. Often, they penetrated the first few trenches and entered hand to hand combat before a counterattack pushed the assault back. It's the Lions led by Donkeys thing. Not true, but it makes a good story.

Now, obviously it's fucking Battlefield and everything will become a Hollywood movie in game form, but this may do a lot to combat a lot of misconceptions that many people have if only by exposing people to the other parts of the war.

Couldn't agree more. It frustrated me no end when the WW1 rumours first appeared and people thought it would merely be 'digging trenches for XP'. They had no idea how much raw potential WW1 has for a battlefield game:

The opening of the war was highly mobile. Troops rushing across the countryside in a series of flanking attempts, eventually became the 'race to the sea' which laid down the initial front lines.

On the Eastern Front, the Russians fought the Central Powers in prolonged and highly mobile actions making use of a lot of horse bound cavalry. That entire front never bogged down into the trench system as much as in the west. A similar situation happened in the Middle East, with horse and even Camel cavalry rushing around shooting and bayonetting the hell out of each other.

Out to sea, the submarine and modern battleship came of age. This was the first war that truly revealed the horror and potential of submarine warfare. Battleships pounded shores and enemy ships, the battle of Jutland probably being the biggest fleet on fleet clash.

Also coming of age was the Warplane. Powered aviation was barely a decade old at the start of the war and yet by 1918 fighters tore across the sky in colossally huge dogfights and bombing raids. Huge bombers like the Gotha V and Caproni Ca.3 were themselves dwarfed by giant airships that roamed the skies, dropping bombs as far as London.

Of great importance to the war was Artillery. Careful mapping, spotting and aiming of bigger and bigger guns during the war caused immense damage to the enemy. And no satellite view to make it easy here- just raw, manual skill.

The Dardanelles campaign was an amphibious assault, like a mini Operation Overlord, to knock Turkey out of the war. Beach landings, hill fighting, sniping, mounted guns, you name it.

Austria-Hungary and Italy clashed along their border in the high-alpine Dolomites, over 2000m above sea level in bitter cold mountain peaks and ravines, with the threat of avalanches looming with every gunshot.

The Australians even mounted a campaign to knock out German bases in Papua New Guinea. Bam: Jungle warfare right there.

For crying out loud, the British even mounted commando operations, like the Zeebrugge raid on U-boat docks in the dead of night.

Spies. Tanks. Flamethrowers, Poison gas. Aircraft Carriers. Big Bertha. Rail guns. Tunnel warfare. Mines. It goes on and on and on.

All of these elements can translate to a Battlefield game. They could be incorporated to provide a Battlefield game with equal or greater variety than any previous game in the series.

Consider me well and truly aboard the hype train.

 

[Hawki]

Consider me well and truly aboard the hype train.

THAT'S the hype train?

...bloody hell, I should get hyped more often. 0_0

 

[Fulbert]

The tonal dissonance is strong with this one. A serious question though, for anyone who has reputable knowledge, how many, if any (I luv commas) African men distinguished themselves during the "great war" and in what theater?

The French did recruit troops from their African colonies and they did see action against the Germans on the Western Front. The Germans themselves largely used African colonial troops for General Paul von Lettow-Vorbek's campaign of causing a nuisance for the British in East Africa that lasted the entire war. If you're talking African-American, then you'd have a much harder time finding one, the only one I can think of is a pilot that flew with the Lafayette Escadrille, as squadron made up of Americans that flew for the French Air Force before the USA officially entered the war in 1917.

Ah, some good information in there. I am actually surprised by das Germans using African soldiers back then, it just never crossed my mind. Were they recruited via normal means, paid, treated respectfully, etc?

Maybe that's a reference to Jaroslav Hasek's Good Soldier Svejk novel? There was a passage in it about a Czech black guy who might have been drafted to serve in the Austrian-Hungarian army. I'll quote this passage, it's quite funny:

"'This cross-breeding,' observed ?vejk, 'is a very interesting matter altogether. In Prague there is a negro waiter called Kristi?n, whose father was an Abyssinian king and who had himself exhibited in a circus at ?tvanice in Prague. A schoolmistress who used to write verses in Lada about shepherds and a forest brook went with him to a hotel and fornicated with him, as it says in the Holy Scripture, and she was awfully surprised when she gave birth to a little boy who was completely white. All right, but after a fortnight the little boy began to get brown. He got browner and browner and then after a month he began to get black. Within half a year he was as black as his grandfather, the Abyssinian king. She went with him to the clinic for skin diseases in the hope that they'd be able to bleach him somehow, but there they told her that it was a real black ****** skin and there wras nothing to be done. This drove her off her head; she began to write to the magazines for advice on what to do against niggers, and they took her away to Kateřinky (a mental clinic in Prague) and put the little ****** boy in an orphanage, where they had an awful lot of fun with him. Then he learned to be a waiter and went dancing in night clubs. Today there are Czech mulattoes who have been successfully bred from him and are not as coloured as he was. A medico who used to go to The Chalice (a pub in Prague) once told us that it's not quite as simple as all that. A half-breed like that brings half-breeds into the world again and they can't be distinguished from white people. But suddenly in a later generation a negro turns up. Imagine the catastrophe! You might get married to a young lady. The filly is quite white and suddenly she gives birth to a negro baby. And if before her ninth month she went without you to the Variety Theatre to watch wrestling where a negro was performing, I think the whole thing would give you something to think about.'

'The case of your negro, Kristi?n,' said the volunteer, 'has to be looked at from a war point of view too. Let's suppose they called that negro up. He's from Prague and so he comes under the 28th regiment. But you've heard how the 28th regiment went over to the Russians. How surprised the Russians would be if they found they had taken the negro Kristi?n prisoner. The Russian newspapers would certainly write that Austria was driving into the war the colonial troops she hasn't got and was already drawing on her ****** reserves.'"

 

[Cowabungaa]

You know why I'm excited?

No UAV bullshit. No thermal sight nonsense. No assault rifle spam. The list goes on. So hopefully this'll feel very differently in terms of gameplay compared to the previous few Battlefield games.

So yeah I'm actually kind of excited. As long as they treat the singleplayer with respect and don't turn it into a blockbuster. Then again that really shouldn't happen with any war.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

I am not a fan. I know it's only fiction, but The Great War is a sticking point for me, and the trailer's glorification of "epic" battles makes me really uncomfortable on a moral standpoint. By all means, make your game, but I really don't feel comfortable with any of this.

Here is the thing I realized about war in general and how the human experiance reflects it.

Sometimes war can feel, EPIC, WITH BATTLES FOUGHT WITH GLORIOUS VALOR:


But other times war can be terrible, ugly, depressing, and sorrowful:

 

[Bob_McMillan]

Sometimes war can feel, EPIC, WITH BATTLES FOUGHT WITH GLORIOUS VALOR:

Speaking of Lawrence of Arabia, he's apparently in the game.

At least, there is Multiplayer DLC themed after him.

 

[Dragonlayer]

The infuriatingly long overlooked First World War taking centre stage?

A significant variety of enviroments, showing the development team understand that the Great War did not take place entirely in Flanders?

Terrifying, awesome gas-masked German soldiers bludgeoning everyone to death with trench-clubs and entrenching tools?

Fucking. Sold.

 

[DeepReaver]

I have wanted a WW1 FPS for a long long time. Why did it have to be EA and Battlefield...

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I have wanted a WW1 FPS for a long long time. Why did it have to be EA and Battlefield...

There's always Verdun.

 

[Bobular]

Can the first level of the campaign be trying to assassinate the Archduke? I do actually think that could be a good intro level, getting to fire the shot that started the whole thing, the starter pistol for The Great War.

 

[GonvilleBromhead]

The tonal dissonance is strong with this one. A serious question though, for anyone who has reputable knowledge, how many, if any (I luv commas) African men distinguished themselves during the "great war" and in what theater?

The French did recruit troops from their African colonies and they did see action against the Germans on the Western Front. The Germans themselves largely used African colonial troops for General Paul von Lettow-Vorbek's campaign of causing a nuisance for the British in East Africa that lasted the entire war. If you're talking African-American, then you'd have a much harder time finding one, the only one I can think of is a pilot that flew with the Lafayette Escadrille, as squadron made up of Americans that flew for the French Air Force before the USA officially entered the war in 1917.

Ah, some good information in there. I am actually surprised by das Germans using African soldiers back then, it just never crossed my mind. Were they recruited via normal means, paid, treated respectfully, etc?

From my understanding the Germans treated the soldiers they recruited relatively well eg. they were paid and didn't get horribly abused, the local civilians that they press ganged into running their logistics train in East Africa (carrying the army's supplies around) on the other hand, not so much, they weren't paid and suffered pretty heavy casualties due to exhaustion and not getting enough food and water.

The uniform he is wearing is British; however, Black British subjects who resided in the UK did volunteer and were conscripted into the British Army, and fought alongside their white compatriots, and there were even a few non-white officers in the British Army (Walter Tull being the most famous, but there was also Hardit Malik, and a few others). This excludes those who were in "Colonial" Armies, so to speak - the Indian Army, and black West Indian's (though the latter weren't used as infantry - more behind the lines stuff), and the variety of labour corps - Chinese, Egyptian, Indian

 

[sonicneedslovetoo]

They actually named it "Battlefield 1" they ACTUALLY NAMED IT THAT? Excuse me I need to go apply to EA as a naming guy because the pile of moldy rocks and used kleenex they currently have employed in that department need to be replaced.

 

[Li Mu]

The Russian campaign needs to feature the Russians killing Germans, getting bored of killing Germans, going home and then killing some Russians.

 

[WouldYouKindly]

So are they going to develop a melee combat system to pair with it? There seems to be a bit of a focus on the face wrecking in the video.

Oh, and they should definitely have a brain and put a bit of an anti-war message in it. God, WWI was a fucking stupid big war.

 

[MrCalavera_v1legacy]

A Battlefield game set in WWI? Awesome!
A BATTLEFIELD game set in WWI? Oh crap...

Also about the African(-american?) man statuette and cover art. I'm not entirely sure what nation he's supposed to represent. Sure almost every European power had men from across their empires come over to fight their battles for them. Heck, even Belgium did. He seems to be wearing American puttees though. So he might be a bit like Freddy from "Valiant Hearts: The Great War"; just some random american volunteer in some army way before the US entered the war, months before it ends.

It seems that he's a member of the american "Harlem Hellfighters" regiment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/369th_Infantry_Regiment_(United_States)
Huh, B1 is even mentioned on the page now.

TBF though, cover looks pretty weak. Not only there's this overplayed grey+orange theme, that doesn't really click with the period, but the dude looks more like a fashion model advertising new WWI inspired collection. Where's the dirt, where's the grit so inherent to the trenches?

 

[SupahEwok]

I'm curious as to what exactly the campaign will be about. If the African American man on the cover is the player's only avatar, then the game'll be pretty limited. It's my understanding that America entered rather late in the war, and only really fought in France to counter the German offensive (plus navy stuff, but that's not going to be included in a shooter). Certainly that was where the Harlem Hellfighters fought.

Lots of opportunity in the multiplayer maps, though.

 

[Fulbert]

Lets see whether the imperialists will forget the Balkan states in WW1. They managed to get the POC in, that is great, but... forgetting *US* would be downright moronic.

Sure will. Don't you know the WWI was a war of Britain and France vs Germany with most battles fought in Belgium and then the Americans came in and saved the day? Also there was something about that murder in Austria-Hungary that triggered the war so that could be shown in the campaign opening, but Austria-Hungary never contributed in any meaningful way so it's not worth mentioning in this WWI game otherwise. Neither are Russia or Turkey (though Gallipoli could be mentioned as Anglo-Saxons died there) or Balkan states altogether.

Oh, and I bet they won't have a German campaign either, cuz who would want to play those wacky Nazis?

 

[GonvilleBromhead]

It seems that he's a member of the american "Harlem Hellfighters" regiment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/369th_Infantry_Regiment_(United_States)
Huh, B1 is even mentioned on the page now.

If he's meant to be a Harlem Hellfighter, they have screwed up pretty badly - as a WWI re-enactor, I can categorically state that is most definitely a British uniform he is wearing, along with British equipment (ignoring the presumably captured German Mauser).